Historical background

In April 1644, the Chongzhen Emperor, the last Ming emperor, committed suicide at Coal Hill as a rebel army entered Beijing. Six weeks later, on 5 June, the army of the Manchus, a people from beyond the Great Wall, entered the city and proclaimed the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Qing.^[2] In the following two years, as the Qing extended their control over northern China, the remaining Ming loyalists attempted to regroup in the south, but in rapid succession the Hongguang, Longwu, and Shaowu emperors were captured and executed.

Campaigns in southern China

Zhu Youlang became "Caretaker of the State" on 20 November 1646, following the death of the Longwu emperor. When Longwu's brother then declared himself emperor with the reign-title Shaowu, Youlang himself ascended the throne (24 December 1646) as Yongli emperor. A brief civil war between the two emperors ended a month later when the Qing captured and executed Shaowu.^[3][4]

Zhu Youlang succeeded to the throne with approval by his fathers widow and principal wife Empress Dowager Wang, who was his own adoptive mother, and during his first five years of reign, she acted as his adviser, and it was said that she was "...versed in letters, aware of current events, analytical about tasks and clear in her reasoning. After the Emperor assumed the throne there was nothing in which he did not follow her wishes."^[5]

The continuing military pressure of the Qing forced Youlang to withdraw further into the south and west, first to Guilin in Guangxi, then to Jiangxi and Hunan, then south again to Nanning in Guangxi. He had a number of experienced and devoted followers, but became increasingly reliant on the military support of local warlords and bandit chieftains. The best and most effective of these was Li Dingguo, who for five years was highly successful in enlarging Southern Ming territories in the southwest.^[4] This success, however, caused the Qing to place the entire region in the hands of the extremely capable former Ming official Hong Chengchou, who was named governor-general of five provinces. By 1658 Youlang had been forced back into Yunnan, on the very edge of China's southwestern frontier.

Flight and exile in Burma

The flight of Prince Gui, the last ruling descendant of the Ming dynasty, who reigned as the Yongli Emperor. The borders shown here are those of provinces in the People's Republic of China.

In 1658 Zhu Youlang retreated to Kunming in Yunnan, from where he sought refuge under the protection of Pindale Min (1608–1661), ninth king of the Taungoo dynasty of Burma. Pindale gave him permission to live at Sagaing, near the Burmese capital of Ava (both near the modern Burmese city of Mandalay), provided his men surrendered their weapons. He finally fled into Burma in 1661.

It soon became apparent to the Burmese that Zhu Youlang intended to carve himself a kingdom in Burma, and war broke out between the exiled prince and his hosts. The Chinese devastated the land around Ava but failed to capture it, thanks to the defence offered by Pindale's mercenary Portuguese artillery (led by a mysterious Mi-thari Kattan, which might be a Burmese attempt at an otherwise unknown "Mister Cotton"). Pindale's attempt to profiteer from the resulting famine led to his overthrow by his brother and chief general, Pye Min (meaning "Prince Pye"), in May 1661. Pye broke the siege and demanded that all the Chinese, with the exception of Youlang himself, swear allegiance to the king of Ava, after which they would be dispersed through the kingdom. The ceremony at which this was to be carried out turned into a disaster, with the Chinese, fearing that the plan was to murder them all, turning on the Burmese. Pye now ordered all the Chinese, again with the exception of Youlang, to be put to death.

At this point, in December 1661, a Qing army of 20,000 under Wu Sangui entered Burma and demanded the surrender of Youlang. Pye summoned his advisors, who pointed out that both the Burmese and the Chinese had previously delivered up persons to each other. In addition, Wu Sangui's army was large, and the Burmese had already suffered enough from the presence of their guest.^[6] Accordingly, on 22 January 1662, the last monarch of the Southern Ming, together with his sons and grandsons, were put on boats and forwarded to Wu Sangui's camp near Ava.^[7] Thinking that he was being taken to his longtime military protector Li Dingguo, the forlorn emperor only realized his real destination when he arrived at Wu's camp.^[8]

Citations

Sources

• Hummel, Arthur W. Sr., ed. (1943). "Chu Yu-lang" . Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period. United States Government Printing Office.
• Kircher, Athanasius (1667), China monumentis: qua sacris quà profanis, …, Vienna
• Lach, Donald F.; Van Kley, Edwin J. (1993), Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. III, "A Century of Advance", Book One, "Trade, Missions, Literature", Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-46753-8.
• Struve, Lynn A. (1986), "The bitter end: Notes on the demise of the Yongli Emperor", Ming Studies, vol. 21, pp. 62–76, doi:10.1179/014703786788764176, ISSN 0147-037X
• Struve, Lynn A. (1988), "Southern Ming", in Mote, Frederick W.; Twitchett, Denis (eds.), The Cambridge history of China: The Ming dynasty, 1368-1644, Part 1, Volume 7 of The Cambridge History of China, Cambridge University Press, pp. 641 sq, ISBN 0-521-24332-7
• Struve, Lynn A. (translator and editor) (1993), Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers' Jaws, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-07553-7 {{citation}}: |first= has generic name (help)
• Wakeman, Frederic E. (1985), The great enterprise: the Manchu reconstruction of imperial order in seventeenth-century China, vol. 1, University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-04804-0